Absent Living
by Artemisdesari
Summary: Set 1 year after 5.22. Dean/Lisa with undertones of Dean/Castiel. Lisa's thoughts about her time with Dean, and about how he leaves and who it's with.


_Holy Chuck I wrote Dean/Lisa! I wrote it from Lisa's POV! Now I've got that out of my system. Birthday present for Punky (who fortunately also ships Dean/Lisa or I would be in much trouble right now). It has undertones, or overtones, of Dean/Castiel because we both love it._

_Season six spoilers as of SDCC so be warned all. I've probably twisted vast chunks to meet my own ends and I've disregarded other bits entirely because I won't believe them until I see them._

_**Disclaimer:** They still aren't mine. Castiel isn't strapped to Dean's bed having unspeakable, and incredibly _fun_, things done to him by said Winchester, Gabriel isn't roaming the corridors singing Gilbert and Sullivan tunes and annoying the hell out of Sam. Which means I have no say or input on the show. Pity.  
_

Absent Living.

Dean leaves sometimes, Lisa muses. Not leaving in the tradition sense of packing belongings and walking out the door, simply that his mind wanders somewhere that no part of her can follow. She knows better than to ask what he thinks about in these moments because a part of her can already supply the answer.

He thinks about his past.

When the hunter turned up on her doorstep a little over eighteen months ago, broken and heart sore, Lisa had wondered what terrible event had brought him to her so damaged. Little by little she has pieced it together. Sam is dead, Dean has been killed more than once himself, he has lost his family, friends, been scarred in a way that terrifies her because the hunter has never once explained how he got a human hand seared into his flesh. The print is just there.

Whatever he was looking for, however, Lisa thinks that Dean has found it with her. Here they have made a life for themselves, they are a couple with a teenage son, Dean works in construction to help support his make shift family. His beautiful black car sits under a tarp in the garage, Dean barely even looks at her. He drinks less now than when he arrived and mostly he sleeps the night through.

Lisa still cannot help but think that the contentment is little more than a carefully maintained facade.

This is not to say that there are not moments when Dean is obviously completely happy with his lot. Moments when they lie together in bed or the former hunter takes Ben to a game of some description. It is simply that sometimes she will come outside and find him looking up at the stars with a beer in hand, eyes distant with anger or anguish or longing. It used to be that she thought he was thinking about Sam, looking at the sky as one would look up to heaven. Now she knows differently, has heard him mutter "Dammit Cas," too many times for it to be Sam he thinks of.

It is not perfect, they fight as any couple would, and sometimes Dean will scare her with his intensity and his presence, but they are good together, they work, and so she accepts his idiosyncrasies. She _does_ wonder, on occasion, why she puts up with him, but then she just has to look at him interact with her son with such care and love and she _knows_ why.

Which is why the knock on the door eighteen months after Dean came to her is such a terrible shock.

"Hey, Lisa," it is Sam's face, Sam's body, Sam's voice, that greets her as she opens the door and looks up at him. There is one problem with that, however.

"You're dead," she blurts and his lips quirk up in a half smile that is utterly rueful and a little apologetic.

"Is Dean here?" He asks and for a moment she considers lying, a long moment that becomes completely unnecessary when she hears the click of a gun being cocked behind her. Lisa's instant thought is that she and Dean have talked about this multiple times, that they have argued and she had thought she had made her point; no guns in the house. Her next thought is to thank some heavenly being that he ignored her.

"What the _hell_ are you?" Dean sounds angrier than she has ever heard and though the thing that looks like Sam winces, he does not seem surprised by the greeting.

"It's me, Dean," it says, spreading large hands to show he is unarmed and looking as unthreatening as six foot four of muscle possibly can. "You can do whatever tests you like, if it makes you feel better."

Dean swears, lowers the gun and gestures for him to come in. At first Lisa thinks that he is being a complete fool, but catching the surprise on the former hunter's face she realises that even if she thought she had won the argument about guns, the one about protection sigils and devil's traps had been completely ignored. Dean tries more things that she had ever considered there could be, even to the extent that he cuts into his own arm and draws in his own blood before slamming the centre of the sigil with his palm. Even Sam is surprised at that one.

"Satisfied?" The younger Winchester asks, because that is all he can possibly be when Dean has taken everything he can think of out of the equation.

"How long?" Dean counters and even though Lisa is not entirely sure what he is referring to, Sam knows.

"Been back six months," Sam shrugs and Dean closes his eyes, she watches as he rubs his face with one hand and takes a calming breath, willing himself not to explode and wake Ben.

"Six months? You've been back _all_ that time and you never once came and," the former hunter pauses.

"You were happy," Sam whispers, "you had a normal life, I didn't want to ruin that."

"So why now?" Dean hisses and Lisa places a hand on his shoulder, the one that is not scarred because he does not like to be touched there.

"I need your help," Sam admits and Dean shakes his head.

"No, I'm not doing that anymore. I lost too much to hunting," his voice breaks a little and she squeezes as Sam's face fills with understanding. "I can't do it again."

"Alright," the word is whispered and somehow Lisa knows that such quiet acceptance cuts into this man she loves more than any shouting would.

Sam stays with them for two days, researching and refuelling, before heading out again. She knows that this is not the last time that she will see Sam Winchester, she knows that he will try again to get Dean back into the world of hunting that the man abandoned in such agony. What she does not realise is that Sam's miraculous return is _not_ the most surprising thing that could happen to Dean this week.

The most surprising part is when a man with messy dark hair and intense blue eyes appears in her living room. His rumpled suit and creased trench coat give him a kind of unkempt appeal, and though his posture is stiff, he exudes the kind of power that automatically makes her take a step back as Dean's face darkens.

"Whatever it is, Cas, I'm not interested," his words both answer one question and stir up so many others. Lisa does not know what this being is but she does know that Dean has been allies with it at one point or another.

"Hello, Dean," this creature's voice is low, powerful gravel that drags through her and sets her to tingling. The blue eyes of the body it wears meet Dean and the two stare at each other so long and so intensely that for a moment she feels like she is intruding upon something private.

"Dean," Lisa has to break the silence, has to get some answers, "who is this?"

"Castiel," the answer comes as though from a great distance, the intense blue gaze turning on her as Dean says the creature's full name.

"I am an angel of the Lord," Castiel tells her and Dean snorts at that.

"Right, how _is_ Dad?" There is a hard note to the words, undertones that Lisa cannot follow and she wishes desperately that she could. Instead she walks quietly from the room, shaken to her foundations and wanting to scream that this cannot be possible, that it cannot be true, except that she has seen miracles this last week.

The wait is long, she does not return to the living room, and she is startled when Dean walks up behind her, calloused fingers tracing the small amount of bare skin between t-shirt and jeans. She leans back into him, turns dark eyes up and back so that she can look at him. He smells different, of feathers and lightning, his eyes are at once haunted with guilt and shining with something suspiciously like happiness and joy.

He wants to make this work, he wants them to be together, but the world is going all wrong again and Cas and Sam need his help to fix it. He promises that he will come back.

Lisa saw the way that he looked at that angel, the way that when their eyes met there was no one else in the room. If Dean leaves with Castiel now, she knows that she will lose him and she wants to make him see that. She wants to make him understand that she cannot be the wife of a hunter, she cannot stay home and worry about the mess that he is getting himself in to. She knows, however, that when Castiel is in the room, nothing else will hold Dean's attention for long. She cannot compete with an angel so she must have faith that she will be the one that Dean will come back to.

She tries to hold on to that as the Impala roars out of the garage, as she sits in the lounge surrounded by the scents of gun powder and leather, feathers and lightning.


End file.
